"It's true that many soldiers are being asked to die for an administration that has made many wrong choices, but we ask that those who express negative opinions about the Iraq war or the military industrial complex remember that soldiers should not be swept into their opposition as well. When these ten veterans show up, hopefully, next September, they aren't here to increase diversity or share a different angle on the divestment debate: they're here because more so than your everyday Wesleyan applicant, they understand the meaning of serving higher ideals than naked self-interest, and even self-identified anarchists should respect their willingness to undergo such a service."

So the next time you're heading out on a Friday night, invite the private down the hall. It would be so hilarious to see him/her in his/her fatigues, looking all red state and shit at the next Eclectic party!

This course will include both classroom and laboratory sessions. Our laboratory will be Middletown's landfill. The landfill, less than 2 miles from campus, dominates the landscape and flood plain of the north end of Middletown. It is a perfect laboratory within which to explore the effects of climate change on both wilderness and urban landscapes using the lenses of science and choreography. For example, the contents of the landfill afford the opportunity to explore the climatic consequences of consumerism, energy use, CO2 and methane production. With an emphasis on the body and its relationship with its environment, participants will have an opportunity to consider the multiple layers of histories, time and memory layered within the landfill and the continuing impact of this changing environment on the body. Students will learn modern scientific and kinesthetic tools for assessing environmental conditions, ecological responses changing in time and space. The methods of scientific deduction and choreographic composition will be applied to metaphor and meaning of climate change. The experience is intended to reciprocally illuminate artistic and scientific practices in pursuit of common goals, renewed pathways of inquiry, perception and ideas. The course will meet for 2-3 hours once per week from the beginning of the semester until spring break and then will meet all day long each week day of spring break. After spring break we will meet as a class and then individually with teams of students in preparation for a symposium on our joint science and art projects.

Extra Credit [NYT]

Sure, I can explain it. Intown (where I once lived), is a party in the past because they bulldozed it two years ago. Everyone's confused as to whether or not they're in a party at Eclectic, for two reasons:

a) When you are at a party at eclectic, you're on shrooms
b) Eclectic sort of sucks... they're always on shrooms and they're snobs about it... why are we at a party there?

"It is now gone from the internets as per their request because it is, apparently, not finished. There is also a video in the works," says blog of all things Wesleyan, Wesleying. Ha, those Wesleyan kids can't even get viral internet success right!

But as we all hold our collective breaths, we can try to begin to puzzle out the meanings of some of the words of the song. "The Bayit (as in "Party at the Bayit, Shabbat Shalom") is a Jewish special-interest house," an alumna informs us. But what's an "Eclectic Party?" Also: why? Why?

Obese girls were only half as likely as non-obese girls to go to college after high school, and were even less likely to enter college if they went to a high school where few other students were overweight, says [University of Texas at Austin sociologist Robert] Crosnoe. But obese girls who went to high school with a sizable overweight population—where heavy girls represented about 20% of the student body — had normal odds of attending college. "The more it makes you stand out from the crowd, the worse it is," says Crosnoe.

Overweight Kids: College Less Likely [Time]

Not Sarah Lawrence! We've consulted the poll, and yes, Sarah Lawrence technically beat out Wesleyan by (at this writing) 1873 to 1733 votes (or 51.9 to 48.1 percent). And it's true, Sarah Lawrence is really, really annoying—this comment seemed to sum up some of the reasons why:

We have a love your body run every september in which people who choose to (never the ones you hope) run naked around the quad while spectators have cocktail hour on the lawn. Did we forget to mention "sleaze week" where you can take workshops or pornography, dental damn usage and the female ejaculation? oh yes. The finale of which is the friday night sleaze ball which, my sophomore year, turned into a weird dominatrix s&m show that was so alarming it caused me to go to my room and shudder until dawn. Oh an the next day we had Mayfair—a little kids carnival for children from the neighborhood. Sinister

I'm a student at Sarah Lawrence College. Uh huh, that one. The person you assume is posting this. I think Scary Larry should win for one simple reason. I have received emails from groups of students and alumni, spanning four decades of attendance, in the last 24 hours who are proud to be in the running for America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College. That's right, they are psyched about the possibility of winning. Yes, Sadie Lou has a long tradition of rebelling for rebellion's sake. This is no exception. Sure there are other countless reasons why SLC should win, most of which I am too ADHD to remember, but this is the reason I like the best. We'll wear this title with pride. This is why us liberal artsy brats so richly deserve to win the contest you've entered us into. Thank you.

So, congrats, Wesleyan. Your graduates will forever be known not for their naked parties, or their stints in a alterna-frat, or for chalk, but rather for beating out Sarah Lawrence on an annoying technicality to be named America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College. We'd like to be the first to offer you the complete library of Hélène Cixous, this funny hat, these vintage thick-rimmed glasses, and this lease on a McKibbin Street loft as your prize. But we can't. You'll have to live that horrible life on your parents' money all on your own.

Cheers,
Gawker

Sarah Lawrence
"I hadn't even been at Sarah Lawrence for a month before I was called into the dean's office to discuss my cameo appearance in some freak's vision. Yes, vision. The girl claimed to have envisioned her own murder after eating a leaf that had been previously "nibbled on" by a fairy. Not only did she take this story to the dean, but the dean was concerned enough to pull me out of class to discuss this. SLC sweep, people."

"go gryphons! this might be the only competition they'll ever win."

"Definitely SLC. Never before have I met a group of people who were farther up their own asses. I think everyone who graduates from Sarah Lawrence should be awarded an honorary doctorate of pharmacology."

"Wealthy families typically have a child who is sent to an elite private school, receives a good education, and by dint of his/her natural intelligence, work ethic instilled by his parents, good grades, benefits that come with wealth, and the university preferences for legacies, goes to Harvard or Yale. That child also has a younger sibling who, with the same education and benefits, spends most of his/her time drinking, doesn't really like learning, and is known for having access to good drugs. That child goes to Sarah Lawrence, and that's why it's my pick."

Wesleyan
"When I filled out my housing forms to enter Wesleyan I had the option of writing in my personal gender expression and whether or not I minded rooming with a person who expressed themselves differently than me... this was also literally the only question I was asked as far as any roommate survey went."

"Remember when you vote: Wesleyan's hottest campus topic is whether or not to allow students to write on the sidewalks with chalk."

"I have an ex who went to Wesleyan and said that virtually all to whom he relayed this asked, "You mean the women's school?" To which he responded, "Wellesley was my first choice." I found this anecdote charming. But I'm not sure in which direction it swings the Wesleyan pendulum."

"The Swarthmore and Vassar descriptions sound JUST LIKE Wesleyan, except instead of heirs to fortunes it's children of utterly random celebrities (Richard Dreyfuss!) or former child stars (Little Man Tate!)"

"Please vote for Wesleyan. Here is why: I recently ran into a Wesleyan undergrad I went to high school with. When I inquired as to his summer plans, he said he had gotten a research grant to study homelessness in New York. This "study" included a two-week stint as - i'm not shitting you - an actual homeless person. The rich hipstard actually lived on the street for two weeks and "hung out" with homeless people, and WESLEYAN PAID HIM TO DO IT."

All right then! To the poll!

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Earlier: Vote For America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College

[Sarah Lawrence image via]
[Wesleyan image via]

First the rationale, and then the voting:
Bard: "A chick I went to HS with went there and within days was smoking opium, having cuddle parties, partaking in "body painting" parties, and majoring in some sort of art. Yeah, definitely the ho's on the Hudson."

Bennington: "Apparently, you can claim to have a degree in anything you took a class in. Or didn't take a class in."

Brown: "it's the same liberal arts bullshit plus all the extra Ivy douchebaggery. Like the students weren't even committed enough to the liberal arts cause to risk that strangers on the street wouldn't immediately recognize their superiority."

Eugene Lang: "Let's take a distinguished and progressive graduate faculty for continentally-influenced social research, and then haplessly attach a poorly run airy-fairy liberal arts college where the undergrad cool-hair kids can major in hipster fuckery and get a head-start on their farther flung liberal arts pals in New England and the Midwest by already living in Williamsburg!!!"

Evergreen: "It's Reed for dumb-fucks. All that no-grades stuff, self-entitled student body, hordes of occasionally-gay band-shirt-wearing twats, absurd classes, the most hipper-than-thou hipsters you've met this side of Williamsburg, etc. BUT THEY'RE ALL IDIOTS ON TOP OF IT. You only go to Evergreen if you got rejected from Reed and Brown. It's truly a marvel."

Goddard: "It's pretty much the predecessor to most of the institutions that you're all mentioning. They never had declared majors, tests, numbered or letter grades. To top it all off, their most famous graduates are the band members of Phish. Top that." [Ed. note: We would also like to note their slogan: "Come to Goddard as you are. Leave the way you want to be."]

Hampshire (via email): "i went there for two and a half years. i had to leave because, after wasting $80,000 of my parents money, i managed to only finish 3 courses although i was never put on academic probation, had my room explode and dorm burn down due to faulty wiring, and managed to make my way up to selling 20 pounds of weed and 50 pills of ecstasy a week. although this was a paltry amount compared to more experienced trust fund drug dealers on campus, i felt i should quit while ahead."

Oberlin: Their grads deliberately make THE most annoying contributions to American culture - Eric Bogosian, Bill Irwin, Julie Taymor, Kim France, Liz Phair, Ed Helms, Josh MacPhee, David Rees, Josh Ritter, and yea, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's a type."

Reed: "Sure, there's a crunchy vibe going on (it is Oregon after all), and there were a lot of recreational drugs, but generally the people I knew were too busy dropping out or contemplating suicide because of all the rain. Reed does love to talk about how everyone goes on to grad school, but as you've probably figured out, there's no money in that."

Sarah Lawrence: "Some other defining characteristics: everyone's vegan, yet still smokes and wears leather; parties have permanently been replaced by trips to Brooklyn and lots of coke; anonymous shit-talking on livejournal is a sport. Also, it's kind of a tradition that with each entering first year class, everyone complains that the school is becoming too "mainstream" and "normal."

Swarthmore: "It should be on the Most Annoying LAC list because of how sickeningly pretentious most of the students are - in the "My family can afford the $45k per year tuition, but I choose to wear grandma clothes from Goodwill, because ironic attire means I'm interesting, right?" Those emo glasses on everyone. The smugness of kids taking first year seminars on shit like "The Art of the Japanese Tea Ceremony," which is a full semseter course. The complaining about honors theses. The sensitivity. The utter lack of preppiness. The way everyone gushes about how is was his/her (my apologies for using gender specific pronouns!) first choice, that they did NOT want to go to Yale. That they are earning "the best education money can buy."

Vassar: "Naked parties, school-sponsored drinking, the Spin article. And I was constantly meeting people who I was later told were "the heir to the Colgate/Palmolive fortune," or "that guy's dad invented post-its." Also, The Bravery went there. That's gotta count for something."

Wesleyan: "So Doree, if you don't want to hear about Electic, how about all of our AWESOME naked parties!?!?!"

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Earlier: Help Us Pick America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College

The Contenders (in alphabetical order)

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